


Not Quite AR Vision

by LittleLinor



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 17:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3904534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLinor/pseuds/LittleLinor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Astral spends more time in the human world, his ability to experience the world as tangible grows.</p>
<p>Keyship, sort-of kink, nonsexual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Quite AR Vision

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sacae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sacae/gifts).



> Birthday present fic. At least my first full fledged fic for zexal wasn't tentacles.
> 
> Warning for stuff like anatomy details, if that's a squick for you.  
> Set a little while after the Mizael duel and Yuuma's time in the hospital.

The air coming through the window catches on Yuuma's hair and carries a few strands aside, brushing his face before falling back into place.  
Astral thinks he can feel it sometimes. Not literally, not in any way that involves touch (or warmth, or cold), but a certain feeling of atmosphere, like the air carries the calm of the night with it, like the warmth of Yuuma's breath is suffocating sometimes, almost as if he actually breathed the same air.  
It's something that has grown with time, so slowly he almost didn't realise it until Yuuma fell and his mind almost thought, for an instant, that if he reached he could catch him.  
Astral feels pain, when it's inflicted through duelling. He feels pain at the Barians' hands, and when he and Yuuma are held in their fields. He feels, sometimes, tangible sensations when interacting with Haruto, like he did when held in the power of the Arclights' crests. But the actual world around him remains out of his reach, and Yuuma even more.  
(And then there's Zexal, and the overwhelming feeling of the ground under his feet, of the world against his senses, _food_ in his mouth, and Yuuma's thoughts brushing his own, but overlaying with Yuuma and touching him are by definition mutually exclusive)  
He can't catch him when he falls, having to rely on people like Shark or Kaito, but he wonders, quietly, if he could feel, guess Yuuma like he seems to do the air.  
Tentatively, he reaches for Yuuma's hand where it hangs from his hammock, and brushes his fingers through Yuuma's own.  
"Astral?"  
He looks up to see Yuuma watching him, broken out of his earlier contemplation of the night sky.   
"What are you doing?" Yuuma asks again.  
"Did you feel that?"  
"No--I heard you sigh." He frowns a little, mouth pouting slightly in concentration, and then amends his first statement. "Well--not exactly. I didn't feel anything but I _knew_ something. But that doesn't make sense," he adds with a sigh.  
"Lately I have been... _aware_ of what I touch or go through. Although it's not a physical sensation. I wanted to see whether that extended to you."  
"Does it?"  
"Yes."  
Yuuma stares at him, mouth still pulled from thinking, and then he extends his hand towards Astral.  
"Do it again."  
Astral extends his fingers, brings them up as if to touch Yuuma's fingertips, and lets them go through, through his fingers then his palm, bringing his hand all the way through and then pulling back slowly, letting the tips of his fingers emerge from Yuuma's palm one by one.  
Yuuma's breathing has sped up.  
"Can you feel it?"  
"No."  
"Why did your breath speed up?"  
"It's nothing!"  
He pulls his hand back, and his eyes drift to the side, like he does when he's hiding something.  
Astral moves closer, his chest hovering a short distance above Yuuma's body in his hammock.  
"Yuuma?" he asks, tilting his head to the side.  
Yuuma doesn't look back at him, and his face has more colour than it usually has, even in the moonlight.  
"... my chest feels weird," he finally says.  
Astral watches him for a few moments, pondering on the possible cause. Yuuma's face is still darkened, but he seems unsure rather than angry or rejectful.  
Rather than make conjectures, Astral extends his arm and lets his fingertips sink into Yuuma's chest.

Yuuma's eyes go wide and he looks back up, body shifting in the hammock and throwing itself out of alignment with Astral's fingers.  
"A-Astral, what--"  
"Don't move."  
He brings his hand back to the area he had been exploring earlier, trying to process in his mind the awareness he has of Yuuma's body as he moves through it. Yuuma breathes in sharply.  
" _Astral!_ "  
"I'm trying to see what's causing it."  
"Causing what?"  
"You said something in your chest felt strange. Maybe I can find a cause, now that I can be aware of what I'm moving through." Yuuma blinks and falls silent, his chin falling a little. "Unless you can feel my hand? I don't want to cause you pain."  
"... I can't feel it."  
Astral nods and continues his exploration.  
The center of his chest is covered by a blade of what seems to be--bone, Astral decides. He needs to ask Yuuma for better material than what he has gathered from class and television. Not everything can be classified into bone and muscle and blood vessels, he quickly notes, and if he didn't have a goal in mind he might have taken longer to map everything, but his priority right now is to find out what is going on with Yuuma's body, preferably without causing him discomfort.  
The issue, he realises with slight irritation, is that with no frame of reference, he could find the problem and assume it to be normal.  
Yuuma lets out a shuddering breath.  
He moves his hand to the right, spurred by a sudden idea, and--there, a little lower than he expected. It has to be his heart.  
He sinks his fingertips into it, carefully, and senses it contracting through them, blood rushing in and out. Fast, faster than he expected from the noises Yuuma had told him were figurative heartbeats in tv shows, and as he lets out a slow sigh Yuuma's heart starts contracting even faster.  
"Is your heart supposed to beat this fast?" he asks, looking away from where his wrist melts into Yuuma's chest and to Yuuma's face instead. "The strain might be what's bothering you."  
"I--you can feel it?"  
Yuuma's cheeks grow even darker, and his breath comes uneven.  
"In a manner of speaking. It's not literally feeling, not the way you can touch something, but I can sense it." He smiles slightly. "It's interesting. A different experience than Zexal."  
"Oh."  
His eyes move away again, and Astral frowns.  
"Yuuma?" he asks, withdrawing his hand slowly. "Are you all right--"  
"I'm okay!"  
Astral pauses.  
"You're probably right," Yuuma says quickly, still not looking at him. "It's totally the heart--haha." He looks up at Astral, then, smiling with one side of his mouth moving more than the other. "You can keep going if you think it's interesting."  
"Really?"  
"Yeah... I mean if you want..."  
Astral smiles, a serene happiness spreading through his body.  
"I would like that."  
He lets his hand move back deeper as Yuuma whispers a muffled "Kattobingu" under his breath.

With the element of worry gone, it's easier for Astral to pay attention to the details through his hand. Yuuma's lungs filling and emptying, crossing a larger part of his wrist and arm before folding back. The network of vessels that branch from his heart, larger than Astral's fingers. He follows one, running his fingertips inside it down Yuuma's body, taking note of the other vessels branching away from it.   
"What are you looking at?" Yuuma asks, voice uncharacteristically deep and quiet.  
"Blood vessels. I think," Astral adds as an afterthought.   
"You _think_?"  
"I would need to cross-reference. I don't have much experience with human bodies."  
For some reason, that makes Yuuma shift slightly, but he nods after that, letting out a slow breath.  
"... maybe we can stay a bit longer as Zexal next time? I mean, when we're not saving Heartland and the Astral World or fighting for our lives..."  
"Have we ever used Zexal when we were _not_ fighting for our lives?" Astral asks with a touch of amusement.  
"Well--okay, no, but maybe next time we can stay a bit _after_ we save the world. You know. To celebrate."  
Astral smiles, and runs his hand up the center of Yuuma's stomach.  
"We could."  
"We--we could get some more duel lunch from grandma and Akari, too," he says, his voice coming faster and lighter. "You liked that right?"  
"I did." There, the bottom of that blade of bone again. "Thank you, Yuuma."  
"It--it's nothing."  
He runs his fingers up the bone covering the front of Yuuma's chest again, and this time he lets them go higher yet, past the top of the bone and into his neck, fingers curving into the shape of his throat.  
Yuuma makes a small noise, squeezes his eyes shut, and tilts his head backwards a little.  
"Yuuma?"  
"I'm okay!" he answers in a slightly squeaky voice, and the muscles of his throat shift and vibrate through Astral's fingers.  
Astral's own skin tingles, like it does when he calls a number to him. Carefully, very carefully, he pulls his fingers back, out of Yuuma's neck, and then pulls his arm back to himself entirely.  
"Yuuma," he calls in the gentlest voice he can produce, bending closer to Yuuma's face. "Yuuma!"  
Yuuma's eyes blink open, their surface glossy and their gaze unfocused.  
"Mmm?"  
"Are you all right?"  
"Yeah." He nods slowly, focus returning to his eyes. "Yeah, I'm fine."  
Astral's skin is still tingling when he looks at his eyes, and that's a greater mystery than Yuuma's body.  
"... I think I've seen enough for today."  
Yuuma nods. Strangely silent, Astral notes, compared to his usual reflex of talking through anything, even when alone.  
"Is your chest still feeling strange?"  
"... a bit. But it's not really bad," he adds as Astral frowns. "It just feels..." he waves his hand in the air. "Strong. Something."  
"Maybe sleep will help," Astral suggests, pulling away.  
Yuuma laughs quietly.  
"Yeah." He pauses. "Hey, Astral?"  
"Yes?"  
Yuuma sits in his hammock and reaches towards him, brushing his fingers through Astral's hand.  
"I'm glad you can feel me."


End file.
